Do the rules need to change, or is it the game?

As NDP House leader Nathan Cullen sees it, the rules in the House of Commons should be similar to the NHL’s, because “current penalties are not effective enough in curbing bad behaviour.”

“First offences get a warning, some time in the box. Second offences and beyond get a suspension. The MP is out of the game for a day or more and they forfeit their salary during that time,” Cullen proposed during a press conference Tuesday morning. “The team is also penalized if this offence takes place during question period, they lose questions which are often quite important for a party’s promotion of particular issues.”

How would this work in practice? Say, perhaps with the NDP’s own regular rule breaker, Charlie Angus, who only the day before in question period accused Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre of wearing a “clown nose”? At the time, the Speaker noted Angus’ comment was likely not helpful to the conversation and left it at that. Outside the House Monday afternoon, Cullen told reporters he thought the Speaker wanted to “send a signal.”

“But if you then look at the Conservative rhetoric through the rest of question period and the House…” he started, before switching gears.

“The Conservative House Leader’s own comment that in days past MPs used to cross the floor and choke each other, as long as … we’re [not] falling to that standard, I guess we’re doing okay, according to the Conservatives. We can do better.”

Cullen said Tuesday the Speaker’s reaction to Angus was likely appropriate. It’s for the more serious stuff that there should be stiffer penalties, Cullen said – things like personal attacks and harassment.

As much as it might be easy to dismiss anyone who holds the NHL’s rule enforcement as a standard to be followed, Cullen’s analogy is somewhat accurate and speaks to the same problems facing the NHL in its attempts to crack down on head-shots and unnecessary fighting. There are two of them: First, the players generally seem to like it the way it is, and second, so do the fans.

In December, National Post columnist Andrew Coyne suggested there’s been a convergence in populist rhetoric in the House between the NDP and Conservatives.

“Because of its name, populism is often falsely supposed to be about giving more power to the people. In fact it is the opposite: it is about harnessing popular fears, prejudices and superstitions in the service of winning power,” Coyne wrote. “As a rule the NDP prefers to menace the public with the spectre of Big Business; the Conservatives tend more to rely on Big Government. But the pitch in both cases is the same: you need us to defend you from these hobgoblins.”

Even when questions in the House have a valid premise, the approach is rarely to gain new information from the side across the aisle, but to present a version of reality that can’t necessarily be answered, but merely spoken to or countered with an opposing version of the facts. This won’t necessarily change just because the rules do. All they would do is force the parties to find new ways to say the same thing in another way in the same tone, because ultimately, in the messaging war, that’s what really matters.

Like much of the discussion around violence in the NHL, Cullen’s approach is somewhat prescriptive, rather than descriptive. The NDP has seen something it doesn’t like and has offered rules in an attempt to alter the structure without really examining what that structure is and considering changes there first.

As Cullen spoke, one NDP flack noted to me that the party would usually rather not engage in similar attacks, but they’ve been forced to play the Conservative game.

Moments earlier, Cullen defended the substance of his party’s questions on Conservative ethical breaches and the government’s handling of First Nations issues, and admitted that “from time to time the style of the question can be problematic.”

Then, in an unfortunate, and ironic, sidestep from that conciliatory note, he brought up what he saw as the Conservative’s tendency to level personal insults across the floor.

“You’ve also seen from the Conservative government who uses all of their statement opportunities — virtually all of them — to make up absolute and outright lies about the Official Opposition… It’s hard to have a conversation with you or you with me if I’m attacking you personally.”